The present invention relates generally to a method for planning and designing object-oriented systems, and more specifically, to a method for planning and designing IT (Information Technology) strategies and architecture plans based on which an Information Technology infrastructure can be built.
With the development of the modern technologies prevalent in today's IT infrastructures--such as client/server systems, data warehouses, massively parallel systems and highly distributed networking, it is well acknowledged that Information Technology (IT) can help an enterprise manage its operational business environments, delight customers, predict customers' future needs, increase market shares, and enhance profits. Information Technology can also enable an enterprise to better use its resources and improve coordination among different organizations within the enterprise, thus improving its efficiency and competitiveness.
Information Technology (IT) infrastructures are the platform on which IT-enabled business systems can be implemented. However, designing and building a high quality IT infrastructure solution for an enterprise is a complex task, because it involves business knowledge about the industry in which the enterprise operates, the organizational and operational knowledge of that enterprise, and the technology knowledge to build the IT infrastructure. An infrastructure solution design may involve an evolving decision process from various parties, including executive officers, managers, IT system users, designers, and builders.
To cope with the complexity of an IT infrastructure solution, an IT architecture plays a role to break down a complex task into smaller and simpler components, and allows the various parties to view the IT infrastructure solution with different perspectives and objectives. Based on a business-aligned IT architecture, an IT architecture consultant can develop IT strategy and plan deliverables for an enterprise. Based on the IT strategy architecture planning deliverables for the enterprise, the various parties, including executive officers, managers, users, designers, and builders, can analyze the investment, risk, feasibility, effort, etc. An IT architecture visual model (which is created by a graphical-based or symbol-based tool) is very effective to present an IT architecture deliverable.
Frequently, an IT visual model can have thousands of objects with complex relationships among these objects. In addition, these objects and relationships are visually built and arranged in a format that is suitable to the processes defined by a methodology.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a method for operating on these objects and relationships with efficiency and convenience in a manner consistent with the operation of the IT architecture visual model.
Therefore, there is another need to provide a method for operating on these objects without imposing any or undue changes on the format and the methodology.
The present invention provides such a method to meet these needs.